Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/375

Rh condition that she bows to the discipline of the harem, and leads a life similar to that which she has been brought up to expect. She will only go out for great ceremonies, civil and religious, to great balls and theatres, to clubs, to salons, to vacations, to State journeys. She will appear then lofty, almost like a goddess, in her great robes, heavy with diamonds, surrounded by a procession of ladies-in-waiting, officials—seen from afar off by the people like an idol. Thus does he gild the cage and adorn the prison; thus does he take precautions for keeping her still a child by amusing her with toys; thus does he regulate minutely her whole life in order that she may pass without any shock from the state of the captive Archduchess at Schonbrunn to the state of the captive Empress at Paris. Thus does he ensure her continence, and thus does he place his wife with Cæsar's, above and outside of suspicion."

say whether one should laugh at or weep over all these things when one knows how it all ended; and is Napoleon to be admired or despised as he goes through all these preparations for his young bride? On the whole I cannot—though it makes him appear rather more good-natured than one had pictured him—I cannot say